A guest article by Brigitte B. Nussbächer
We are the grandchildren of the generations who suffered through World War II, and we have the chance not to participate when the world once again turns against Israel, but to stand up for Israel! We have the chance not to repeat the mistakes of our ancestors!
Contents:
- The escalation: Kristallnacht 1938 versus Black Shabbat 2023
- Surprise or logical progression: Germany from 1933 versus Israel from 1948
- World public reaction: Evian Conference 1938 versus UN General Assembly October 2023
- The next phase: 1938: The Holocaust, the silence of the Church, the silent heroes versus 2023: New beginnings, our chance
1. THE ESCALATION
Kristallnacht 1938
Exactly 85 years have passed since Kristallnacht. The term is a euphemism, for in truth, far more than just glass was destroyed. On the night of November 9-10, 1938, 1,400 synagogues burned across the German Reich, and 7,500 Jewish businesses, as well as other institutions, including schools and orphanages, were destroyed. On that night, Jewish civilians were assaulted, threatened, arrested, and murdered in the streets, in the presence of the police, by the Sturmabteilung (SA), the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party. The exact number of dead is unknown. It is estimated that more than 1,300 Jews died that night or later as a result of the events.
Today we know that Kristallnacht marked the transition from the discrimination against German Jews beginning in 1933 to their systematic expulsion and oppression. From November 10, 1938, Jews were deported to concentration camps. Ultimately, these actions culminated in the Holocaust, the declared goal of annihilating all Jewish life, and resulted in the murder of more than six million Jews. How was this possible in "civilized Europe" and under the eyes of the world?
The “Black Shabbat” 2023
On October 7, 2023, Israel experienced a new "Kristallnacht"—a Black Shabbat, as this day is now known in Israel. At dawn, Hamas terrorists from the Gaza Strip crossed the border into Israel. They destroyed more than 20 Israeli towns and villages and perpetrated a horrific massacre. They took more than 230 hostages and abused, tortured, and murdered more than 1,400 Jewish civilians.
“There were scenes of horrific cruelty, barbarity, mutilation, dismemberment, and rape. Couples and family members were bound together and burned alive; entire families had their organs harvested while still alive; children were forced to watch their parents being tortured and killed; parents were forced to watch as their children had their eyes gouged out and their heads smashed in. Living rooms, kitchens, cribs and toys, baby cradles, bathrooms, lawns, cars—everywhere the congealed blood of the murdered Jews.” (Source: Israel Today, Stan Goodenough, October 29, 2023)
Even three weeks later, not all of the partially dismembered and burned bodies have been identified.
What will be the consequences of October 7, 2023? While rockets continue to be fired at Israel, Israel retaliates and attacks the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Simultaneously, the Shiite Hezbollah militia in Lebanon begins firing rockets at Israel. Iran, whose stated goal is the destruction of the Israeli state, also threatens action.
After centuries of Jewish persecution, pogroms, and wars, will the world once again stand by and watch as attempts are made to annihilate the Jews? Will we understand this time what the urgent demand is?
Will we recognize that this is our chance to show that we have learned from the past? Will we be willing to stand up for Israel? Will we be among those who make a difference?
2. SURPRISE OR LOGICAL INCREASE?
The backstory: Germany from 1933 onwards
Was Europe, was the world, caught off guard in 1938? Were there reasons to believe that this was merely a temporary madness, the crime of a mob? No! The anti-Semitic policies of the National Socialist German government began as early as Adolf Hitler's rise to power in January 1933. A few facts:
- In April 1933, the first centrally controlled terrorist action took place in the German Reich: the boycott of Jewish businesses.
- In the same month, the Civil Service Act and the Law on Admission to the Legal Profession were passed, through which approximately 37,000 Jews lost their professional livelihoods in Germany.
- The Nuremberg Laws were enacted in September 1935. The "Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor" prohibited marriage and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews. The Reich Citizenship Law created different classes of citizens.
- From the end of 1937 onwards, rapid expropriations became apparent. SA thugs beat thousands of Jewish business owners out of their shops, businesses and homes and seized them.
Kristallnacht was indeed an escalation of anti-Semitism – but at the same time a logical continuation of the anti-Semitic acts that had already been going on for years.
The backstory: Israel from 1948 onwards
Was the Hamas attack on the "Black Sabbath," October 7, 2023, a surprise? Was it merely a temporary madness, the crime of a mob? No. Israel has been regularly attacked since UN General Assembly Resolution 181 of November 29, 1947, which called for the establishment of a Jewish and Arab state, because the Palestinians and the Arab countries refused—and in some cases still refuse—to accept a partition of the British Mandate of Palestine.
- The first attack came at midnight after the proclamation of the Jewish state by David Ben Gurion on May 14, 1948, from the Arab countries of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon.
- In 1973, Israel was attacked by Egypt and Syria on its most important Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur.
- In between, the Suez Canal was closed to Israeli ships in 1956, leading to the Suez Crisis, and Egypt, Syria, and Jordan announced an Arab attack in 1967. Israel responded with a preemptive strike, resulting in the Six-Day War.
- In 1982, terrorist groups attacked Israel from southern Lebanon; in 2006, two soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah. This led to the two Lebanon Wars.
Regarding the Gaza Strip in particular, Israel unilaterally and completely withdrew from the territory in 2005. But even that did not bring peace; on the contrary.
- Years of shelling Israeli cities with several thousand rockets from the Gaza Strip led to Operation Cast Lead in 2008, which ended in January 2009 with a unilateral ceasefire declaration by Israel.
- Hamas and other Palestinian groups continued firing rockets toward Israel, particularly in the second half of 2012. For the first time, the rockets reached Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, severely disrupting daily life for more than a million people in Israel. Israel responded in November 2012 with Operation Pillar of Cloud, which ended with a ceasefire later that month
- …but it did not bring peace. In July 2014, Israel responded to renewed and sustained rocket fire from Hamas and other militant Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip with Operation Strong Rock. This ended in August with an indefinite ceasefire.
But since then, there have continued to be regular rocket attacks on Israel. What is considered a catastrophe and leads to war in other parts of the world has become a sad reality here. Israel tries to intercept and neutralize the rockets with its Iron Dome defense system. Most of the time, it is successful. And the world looks away!
The “Black Shabbat” is indeed an escalation of anti-Semitism and aggression by Hamas – but at the same time a logical continuation of the attacks that have been going on for years.
3. REACTIONS OF THE WORLD PUBLIC
1938 – The Evian Conference
Even before the November pogroms, the flow of Jewish refugees from Germany was increasing. In response, the United States proposed an international conference, which finally took place in Evian in July 1938. Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and nearly all Central and South American countries participated. Poland and Romania sent observers.
The governments of the participating states were aware at the time that Jews in Germany and Austria had been almost completely deprived of their rights and that thousands of them had already been murdered or driven to their deaths. Nevertheless, none of the 32 participating countries declared itself willing to accept a significant number of the threatened Jews.
As early as November 1937, Great Britain imposed strict immigration restrictions to its Mandate territory of Palestine in an effort to calm the situation – despite having promised the Jews a “national home” in principle in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. In 1938, in view of the looming war and at the request of the Arab states, Britain further reduced the immigration quota for Palestine to a maximum of 20,000 per year.
At the end of 1938, approximately 125,000 people lined up outside US consulates; by 1939, this number had risen to 300,000, all hoping to obtain one of the mere 27,000 visas issued to immigrants from Europe under the quota system in place at the time. In the second half of 1941, despite reports of mass murders perpetrated by the Nazis, the US State Department imposed even stricter immigration quotas, citing concerns about domestic security.
Switzerland admitted around 30,000 Jews, but also turned away roughly the same number at its border. Bolivia took in around 30,000 immigrants. Another 5,000 Jews managed to escape to China, and another 600 reached the Dominican Republic.
Were countries unable to accommodate more refugees? Current figures refute this claim. Germany, for example, took in more than one million refugees in 2015/16, mostly from Syria, and more than one million Ukrainians in 2022. And these are only the official figures; the actual number is significantly higher. (Source: https://mediendienst-integration.de)
2023 – the UN General Assembly on October 27, 2023
In 2023, following the horrific Hamas attack, a number of so-called solidarity visits took place, but little practical support was visible. Just two weeks later, the international community, with a two-thirds majority of 120 votes in favor, 14 against, and 45 abstentions, demanded an immediate ceasefire from Israel in the UN General Assembly resolution of October 27, 2023, as well as the immediate provision of water, food, fuel, and electricity, and "unhindered" access for humanitarian aid for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The resolution does not name the terrorist organization Hamas, it does not condemn Hamas's atrocities of October 7, and it does not affirm Israel's right to self-defense under international law. The fact that even countries like Germany, which claim that Israel's security is a matter of national interest, did not vote against it clearly demonstrates the true value of their verbally pledged solidarity.
4. THE NEXT PHASE
The Holocaust
The sad truth is that Nazi Germany perfected mass murder in a horrific way, thus writing the darkest chapter in world history.
But the sad truth is also that they would never have been so successful if they had encountered determined resistance.
Denmark has the rare distinction of being the only Nazi-occupied country in Europe that bravely resisted the Nazi regime's attempt to deport its Jewish citizens, saving 99 percent of them. In 1943, within just three weeks, Danish fishermen managed to evacuate almost all of Denmark's Jews to neutral, unoccupied Sweden. Finland, an ally of Germany since 1941, largely refused to extradite its Jewish population. Bulgaria, also an ally of Germany, saved approximately 50,000 Jews.
These examples prove that determined resistance could successfully thwart the German extermination plans.
The situation was quite different in Eastern Europe, where five million Jews lived – in the territories that today comprise Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, Moldova, Romania, and Lithuania. In the former Tsarist empire, state, church, and people had already been ruthlessly persecuting Jews since the 19th century, restricting their rights through special laws and persecuting them with pogroms. These countries, too, were occupied by Nazi Germany at the end of 1939 (Poland) and in 1941 (Ukraine, Belarus). But they were already familiar with anti-Semitism.
In many cities in western Ukraine, Jews were murdered without an explicit order from the occupiers. In mass shootings carried out by German and Ukrainian police units, around 100,000 were killed in Babyn Yar near Kyiv alone. In total, approximately 1.5 million people in Ukraine fell victim to the Holocaust.
Even before Romania entered the war on the German side, in 1941, under the military dictatorship of General Ion Antonescu and the Iron Guard organization, ordered the deportation of all Jews and carried out the near-total extermination of approximately 350,000 Jews. Here, too, Romanian military and police units, as well as members of the civilian population, participated in the murder alongside soldiers of the German Wehrmacht.
In Poland, Jews were repeatedly killed and injured as early as 1935. Their businesses were often looted. In 1937, the number of Jewish students at some universities was halved through the introduction of quotas and segregation by seating arrangements. Many senior positions were inaccessible to Jews. Massacres were also carried out in Poland after the Nazi occupation, sometimes with the active participation of Polish citizens, for example at Jedwabne.
Construction of extermination camps began in 1940. Unlike other concentration camps, where inmates died primarily from systematically induced disease, malnutrition, and excessive labor, in addition to individual murders, the extermination camps served the immediate purpose of murdering those deported there.
Is it a coincidence that all the extermination camps in which more than three million people were murdered in what was often described as an industrialized manner between 1941 and 1945 – Auschwitz-Birkenau, Madjanek, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka – are located in present-day Poland, and Bronnaja Gora and Maly Trostinets in present-day Belarus?
The silence of the church
In Germany, 96 percent of the population belonged to Christian denominations. Two-thirds of these were Protestant, the other third Catholic. Within the churches, it should have been known that the Jews are God's chosen people, with whom he has made an everlasting covenant (see Genesis 15:18; Exodus 34:10; Jeremiah 31:31-33). And that whoever blesses Israel will be blessed, while whoever curses Israel will bring a curse upon themselves (Genesis 12:3; Genesis 49:9; Numbers 23:24; Deuteronomy 30:7).
However, many churches and their members believed that Jews were "God-killers," condemned and unworthy of God's grace and that of man. They held that Israel had forfeited its place in God's plans and that Christians were now the new Israel (replacement theology), even though Paul clearly states in Romans 11 that God has not rejected his people, that he does not demand the return of their gifts, and that he does not revoke his promise of election.
Neo-Protestant congregations were not necessarily any different. In 1938, 27 days before Kristallnacht, the German Pentecostal Church passed a resolution supporting Hitler's anti-Semitism and revising its church constitution in accordance with the Nuremberg Race Laws: "The expulsion of the Jews from the community of our people, as well as from other peoples, is for us a process according to divine providence and divine will."
Although the Bible originated from Jews, although it contains the history of Judaism and the promises of the prophets to Israel, and although the savior of Christendom, Jesus, was a Jew, the churches did not stand up against the extermination of the Jews.
Ultimately, it was the collaboration of almost everyone with the Nazi regime that significantly contributed to the murder of the European Jews and made it possible on this scale.
The silent heroes
And yet, in every country, there were people who thought differently and, above all, acted differently. People who were prepared to risk their lives and the lives of their families to save Jews from extermination. There are prominent examples like Oskar Schindler and Corrie ten Boom, but many more. Some citizens procured ration cards, others forged documents, or helped Jews flee to less dangerous locations. And still others provided Jews with shelter.
In a world of total moral collapse, there was this small minority who displayed extraordinary courage to uphold human values. There was a line they were unwilling to cross. Some of them are honored as "Righteous Among the Nations" at the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, but many remain simply the "silent," unknown heroes.
All these people are proof that everyone ultimately makes their own decisions – and is therefore responsible for them. That no mass dynamic, no ideology, no persecution is so powerful that the human mind is no longer capable of distinguishing good from evil and taking an independent stand.
As the Viennese Jew and neurologist Viktor Fankl, a concentration camp survivor, wrote in his book "Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything!": "Man is the being that decides what he is."
"Ultimately, life means nothing other than bearing responsibility for the right answers to life's questions, for fulfilling the tasks that life sets for each individual; for meeting the demands of the moment." And: "You can take everything from a person, except the ultimate human freedom to adapt to the given circumstances in one way or another."
These unsung heroes teach us that everyone can make a difference.
New beginnings after the war
It has not yet been 80 years since the Holocaust. The world expressed its horror after the liberation of the extermination camps, but few were willing to take in the survivors after the war.
The United Nations gave Jews the chance to establish their own state in their ancestral homeland, only to then strongly advise against it. When the 650,000 Israelis, the majority of them Holocaust survivors, defended their independence in 1948 against 160 million Arabs, there was little support from the countries that had verbally voted in favor of a Jewish state.
After the war, individual countries more or less grappled with their own contribution to and the resulting responsibility for the Holocaust. The generation that came later was certain that they would act differently. "Never again!" was the motto.
The question is: How do we deal with this today? As individuals, as Germany, as nations? Will we keep our promise of "Never again"?
Our chance – today!
Even today, countries are arming themselves against Israel and threatening its annihilation. And where does Europe stand? Why have there been violent demonstrations since October 7th in almost every European capital and many other cities, where hate slogans are shouted?
In Germany, the number of antisemitic incidents has increased by 240 percent in recent weeks! The fact that 86 percent of the refugees Germany has taken in since 2015 come from countries that question Israel's right to exist certainly contributes to this. This rise in open Jew-hatred raises the question of how far Germany is actually living up to its commitment to Israel and the Jewish people.
In the United Kingdom, more than 600 antisemitic incidents have been reported; in the US, Jewish students say they are afraid to leave their rooms; and in the Caucasus, a mob is taking over public institutions and searching for Jews to lynch. (Source: Telegram from Israel Today, October 30, 2023)
And where do we stand? We are the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the generation that lived through the Second World War, and we know the history of our grandparents and great-grandparents. We should know whether they persecuted Jews or protected them back then—we know from films, books, and stories what happened during those years and how it happened. No one can hide behind ignorance.
We have a chance – every single one of us! We have the chance not to participate when the world turns against Israel again, and we have the chance not to repeat the mistakes and sins of our ancestors.
Christians have the opportunity to pray for Israel and the Jewish people: “O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen upon your walls; they shall never be silent day or night. You who remind the Lord without rest, give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praiseworthy place on earth!” (Isaiah 62:7) We can be these watchmen!
But even apart from prayer, we have the opportunity to actively stand up for Israel and help practically wherever we can – even if they are only small things, they may have a great impact.
We have the opportunity to show Israelis and Jewish people in our community that we respect them, love them, and stand by them. We cannot undo the past, but we can help shape the present and influence the future: through our words and, even more so, through our actions and the message our lives convey.
Will we seize this opportunity, will we make the difference?
